Adobe Flash used to be an essential part of our daily internet experience, but today, it feels more like a relic of the past. No major mobile device today ships with Flash — Apple notably never included it in iOS, and then Adobe itself dropped mobile Flash on Android last August. Microsoft even curtailed Flash in Windows 8, limiting it to running Flash on a pre-approved sites in the new Modern IE.

Even still, on the desktop you’ll often find that you need to use Flash. That’s why our writer Nathan Snelgrove just wrote an article on our sister site Mac.AppStorm on the best ways to avoid using Flash on your Mac.

It’s aimed mainly at Safari users, and even recommends using Chrome for Flash since it’s built-into Chrome. But, if you’re an IE or Firefox user on a Windows or Linux PC who’d rather get around using Flash, it’s got enough tips that you might find some of them helpful.

Apps that enable you to send contact information and files from one device to another have been available for years now, but when it comes to sharing websites, email is often the best bet. Yup: if you want to open the page you’re looking at on your computer in your phone’s browser, often the easiest way to move the link around is emailing yourself. That just doesn’t seem right.

While many web browsers now offer the option of syncing open tab sessions between computers, the way synchronization has been implemented is not always ideal since they only work with other versions of the same browser. What if you use Chrome on your computer and Safari on your mobile devices?

This is where SendTab can help, making it possible to push tabs from one browser to another, on any device. Let’s see if it holds up to its promise.

Sometimes it seems that writing is more important today than it’s ever been in history. From Facebook status updates to txt messages, we’re all writing and reading almost more than we’re talking and listening. And while the internet has hastened print media’s troubles, many of us still read tons of text online weekly.

Whether you’re reading news articles, a great longform story, or a review of a new app here at the AppStorm network, sometimes the internet just isn’t the best place for thoughtful reading. From small font sizes to cluttered layouts, the web often takes the joy out of reading. Here’s some of the best ways to make your online reading experience better no matter where you’re reading.

As incredible as it seems, it’s been over a year and a half since the original iPad was released, forever changing what the world thought of tablet computers. The old Tablet PCs were clunky, expensive machines that could run any Windows program, albeit slower and more awkwardly than a full computer. The iPad at first glance looks just like a scaled-up iPhone, but the wide range of apps and number of varied uses it’s found in homes, schools, and businesses has made tablets a permeant part of our computing ecosystem.

One area where the iPad and other tablets have lagged behind is with web apps. While Safari on the iPad is a modern, quite capable browser, many web apps are difficult to use with fingers, and can run very slow on slower processors. Over the past year, though, more and more web apps have been designed or updated to take advantage of the iPad’s features, including multitouch, gestures, and more. Let’s look at some of the best web apps today for the iPad, and if we miss your favorite, be sure to let us know in the comments below!

Browser extensions are a great way of extending the functionality of a browser through a third-party and can add a ton of useful utlities, features and customisation options. These modifications can be as big a part of your life as the network itself, creating disappointment when you log in somewhere and the extension isn’t present.

Earlier this week, we took a quick look at some great browser extensions for Twitter. Today we’re going to look at Facebook and a bunch of browser extensions to support and modify it, including the simple things like zooming in on photos to the larger things like manipulating your news feed and even integrating it with Google+!

Twitter can be an awesome tool and is, with no doubt, my favourite social network. Personally, the sleek design and functionality of the Twitter app on Mac draws me to use native apps instead, but when I was a Windows users, the web app was my favourite method of connecting. Luckily, being browser-based, the Twitter website can be manipulated with some extensions to customise the experience you have with it.

In today’s roundup, we’re going to take a look at some of the best browser extensions that optimise, customise and manipulate the Twitter experience on the web.

The possibilities of browsing Internet content nowadays is pretty much endless. There is such a range of web browsers out there that it gives you a headache deciding between them all. Given the recent explosion of smartphones and tablets such as Apple’s iPad in recent years, web browsing has been made mobile. In today’s technology-obsessed world, if you’re cut off from the Internet, you’re just about cut off from life itself.

Yet given all these new-fangled browsers, the actual way of internet browsing hasn’t really changed over the years. Take Google for example. Apart from the odd tweak here and there, the world’s most popular search engine looks pretty much the same as it did several years ago, where it was competing among the likes of Altavista, Lycos and Yahoo.

Yes, if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. However, you’d think there would be a more intuitive way of browsing through images and videos. I certainly do. And this is where Cooliris comes in. Believe it or not, it’s actually a browser plug-in rather than a standalone app, and what a plug-in it is. It is, for the time being anyway, the best way to browse interactive media such as pictures, videos and games on the Internet.

Look back six years ago, to the year 2005, and the Web is a different place. The Browser Wars are still raging, and while Netscape is putting up a valiant fight, Microsoft and Internet Explorer are looking more and more invincible. It looks like the Web will fall to the evil Empire, and there’s little that anyone can do to stop it.

And then, on June 7, 2005, Bertrand Serlet stepped onto the stage at WWDC and announced something no one really saw coming — the soul of Apple’s little upstart browser, Safari, was being open sourced. And it was called WebKit. Apple was once again trying to give Microsoft a run for their money, and they were going about it in a totally different way then anyone would’ve expected.

Think about it for a second. Apple is a notoriously secretive company. Why would they want to oversee an open source software project? To answer that question — and to properly judge how successful this open source endeavor has been — we have to take a look back at WebKit’s roots. But I’d also be remiss if I didn’t touch on what WebKit is becoming today, and where it could be heading tomorrow. Knowledge of the past is important, because it helps us understand the present — and to better prepare for the future.

Even though they’ve been late to the game, Safari’s extension support has spread like wildfire. People who are passionate about Safari are also passionate about making it the best in can possibly be. A robust community has formed here. And it’s my pleasure to bring to you, dear reader, a sampling of some of the latest and greatest Safari extensions available today.

Firefox is the king of add-ons and it’s proven to be popular and successful, helping users customize and enhance their browser and browsing experience. Chrome followed in Firefox’s steps, offering a growing selection of fantastic extensions. Safari may be late to the show, but better late than never!

Though Safari has a very limited selection of extensions available, a decent starting gallery launched with the release of Safari 5.0.1. Here are the top 15 new Safari 5 extensions.